Through Her Eyes
by Vlonlin
Summary: This is just a brief, one shot for Yasra Arabani during the Silence of Lolth on the surface.


Raindrops trickled like tears down the windowpane, gathering into dark pools on the wooden sill. Like celestial mirrors, they reflected the misty clouds above, painting a dreary image of a shadowy world lost between lights, haunted by what could have been. It was in this twilight realm that Yasra dwelt while the rest of her companions slept, left to her own reflections.

He had been different from all the others, as much as it pained her to even think such a clichéd turn of phrase. She had known that ever since the moment she leveled the crossbow at his heart and demanded to know who he was.

She had experienced her share of trysts and encounters in her home realm. It was ridiculous that she start behaving like some love-struck fairy maiden who just received her first kiss. But she couldn't seem to help it.

Yasra frowned and turned her gray eyes out the window, her thoughts straying to their favorite object of contemplation. _Him._

Those words of honor and duty, though undeniably foolish and perhaps even idiotic at their worst, seemed endearing when he uttered them. She wasn't entirely certain if it was just that his ignorance and naivety awoke some latent weakness on her part that had laid buried since her kind split apart from their kin, or if the feeling was conjured up by the sheer belief he had for them. She had long entertained the idea that his blind faith in those ideals made them real, somehow.

He had saved her life, rescuing her from the horror she had been sealed in with. Haelryne certainly hadn't had such a stroke of luck, her bones no doubt still gracing the tomb's doorstep. But he had never asked for anything in return.

Yasra shifted her weight slightly, pondering this greatest of mysteries. For as long as she had been in his company, he had never demanded anything of her. If there was a secret she had been keeping from him that he found, he didn't press her about the matter. And he had this aura of...thereness. There was no other term that it fit under comfortably.

And then, when she had been poisoned by an enemy in a war he wasn't involved in, he saved her again. Her memories of being carried from the Fiveleague House to the coastal city of Aesir were blurred at best, but she knew her other friends would never let her live it down.

For all her cunning and knowledge of the nature of her fellow creatures, this baffled the priestess.

She hadn't reacted well at first. After years of only looking out for her own well-being and interests, the uncontrollable urge to put his health and happiness ahead of her own frightened her. Her first instinct had been to either drive him away or destroy him as the root of this weakness, like one would cut out a cancer. But losing him...the idea brought far too much pain.

Now, loving him was as difficult as breathing—she did it without a thought. _If only..._

Yasra made an irritated noise. "I hate you," she said quietly, fixing the mirror to one side of her with her most armor-piercing glare. The reflection in the flawless glass glared back, but far more effectively. Just maybe, if her skin was fair instead of ebony, her hair dark instead of white, they could have had a chance.

No human paladin worth the prestige that accompanied such a vocation was going to look at her, a female drow—a priestess of Lolth, albeit one who had lost her way in this silence with no guidance from the Spider Queen or the Matrons—the same way she looked at him.

She rose from her seat and went downstairs to the cacophony of rough laughter, clinking glasses, and general merriment. Drink seemed to make this conflict easier, muted. With a lifedrinker hunting her, she wouldn't overindulge the craving for happy brain-death in a glass. Just enough to take the edge off, as Vuzas would say. The priestess ordered something, setting a silver coin on the rough wood of the bar. It was gone in an instant, replaced by the overly-sweet drink humans called 'ale'. She settled at a low corner table with the chipped, brown ceramic mug, uncomfortable in the heat radiating out of the roaring fire. The snapping and crackling of pine logs blended with conversation and jovial shouting into a sort of background noise, like the roar of the sea.

Yasra allowed the details to wash over her—the smell of roasted meat and spilled drinks of various brews, the clink of mugs against the tables in time with the song raised by many voices, the smoke of pipe tobacco forming a cloud in the room above her head, obscuring stout oaken beams. She spent a good hour or so downstairs with her ale, just looking and listening.

By the time she returned, night's veil had deepened even further, gently covering the countryside with a midnight shroud. The paladin was there sleeping in the bed across the room from hers, his plate armor that was sitting on the floor beside him gleaming in the moonlight.

Yasra moved closer, ebony skin and white hair blending into the dappled pattern of darkness and silver moonlight. His features looked even more peaceful and angelic now, in turn filling her with a sense of blissful serenity. She padded over to her side of the room and laid down on the narrow bed, making an effort to be silent.

"Goddess, may he never sleep uneasy," she murmured. Sometimes, the silence was enough.


End file.
